


Got No Strings

by Quilly



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Dreambubbles, F/M, Game Over, in which gamzee is always under mind control, lil cal theory, until the second he died
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4975159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quilly/pseuds/Quilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At long last, the first dead Gamzee breathes free air (metaphorically), but can never be free of his guilt.</p><p>Aradia has no intention to help him with that, but she does need something from him regardless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Got No Strings

**Author's Note:**

> for my pal toastyhat. because black aragam is the weirdest greatest thing of all time.

Your head is all a-fuzz and you got a headache like it done been split right in two. Then you recall something of the sort happening and giggle at the irony. Your throat is raw and it hurts. Funny, you know you’re dead on account of the white oculars you’re getting your peep on in the reflective surface of whoever’s hive this is, but you ain’t never felt so clear in the head before. Not for a while, anyhow. Not since before…before…

You want to forget so you don’t finish the thought. Ain’t nothing pleasant about how your life went once the whispers started.

You get your look on about your surroundings. Seems like a hive. Dream bubbles, some part of your pan supplies, the part what let itself be ROTTED INTO and CONTROLLED. You shake it off. Don’t know whose hive it is, but couldn’t hurt to go armed. Seems like your miracle modus still works. Death is kind.

Club in paw, you creep on down the stairs, eyes peeled. You know it’s a lowblood hive on account of the cramped space. Ain’t nobody home, seems like. You open the front door and there she is. You ain’t seen her with clear eyes ever before, but you know her for who she is. You have seen her in your wanderings, in your sneaking around like a COWARD. She looks you over, careful-like, then smiles, lips bright like that blood you know is just PUMPIN’ under her skin.

“Never seen one of you here before,” she says like she’s jawing about the weather. “Not dead, anyway.” She smiles. “It’s about time.”

You take her all in, red pajamas and wings, smiling like a wiggler picking daisies, and decide she ain’t a threat. You move to walk on by.

She turns and walks in step.

“So how’d you die?” she asks. “And where’ve you been?”

“Somehow,” you grunt, “and places. Ain’t no business of yours.”

“Ooh, touchy,” she laughs. “Well, from what I’ve seen, you’ve just been helping the bad guy and killed pretty much all of my remaining living friends.” You glance at her. Her smile is still on her face, pleasant. “You’ve been busy, Gamzee.”

“Weren’t me,” you mutter, even though your pan screams YES IT WAS and you know that for truth. “I got demons in my pan, sister. Wickedest masters made use of their meat puppet.”

“Their loyal servant, you mean,” she says.  No bite or iron, no ill look on her mug, but her words cut. You grit teeth and press on. Surroundings up and change, a red dust planet what you’ve seen before in a dream, but if this is the dream, was that real? Statues of some crumbled broad in the distance. And down in a crater, a dried crust of some kind of birth-fluid. Your own footprints lead down and away. You stare into the sight and burn.

“My pan,” you say, emotions what you can’t name making your name strange, “IS MY OWN. For the first time in a goodly sweep.” You turn and look down at her. “Aradia.”

Wings flutter when you say her name. You admit it feels some sort of good to have an old familiar name rolling about your mouth.

“Gamzee,” she says, and puts her hands on her hips. “If you’ve been with Lord English this whole time, then maybe you can give us insight into what his plan is. Maybe even how to defeat him.”

You flinch back, look back into the crater, then at your hands. Your hands what you know have wrought most despicable wrong. Your hands what strangled and bludgeoned and stabbed, what wrapped around the flesh of a girl what didn’t deserve you. You knot those traitorous blaspheming fingers into your hair and yank.

“No,” you say. “No, sister, no.” Memories flash across your pan faster than you can take, memories of what you done, what was done to you. Tear of bullet and stretch of smile, devotion and hatred, two quick stabs through the loops on a familiar sign and an arm around a throat what you once kissed rough and open-mouthed—

A sharp slap across the face brings you back with a snarl, not out of someone else’s rage, but your own indignation. You savor that, savor the feel of your pan being your own and no one else’s PLAYTHING.

“Gamzee,” she says, and her smile is gone, “focus. We need you.”

“No one needs me,” you say, voice of venom and despair, then you LOOM on account of height and advance. Aradia steps back. “Ain’t no one who DESERVES ME. What a brother has to do to receive double death I will do. What wickedness is locked in my pan will DOUBLE DIE with me.”

“Gamzee—” she done tries, but you overpower, grab her arms and give shake. Not hard, just a little to make her SHUT UP.

“Sister, sister, don’t you SEE?” you growl. “HE WILL BURN ALL TO ASH. All what I valued he made me tear with my own claws. WHAT I HELD DEAR I SEVERED. Ain’t no future, Aradia.” You release her, stumble back, fall to knees then face. “ALL IS LOST.”

She grabs your horn and yanks you up. Then she slaps your face again. You growl and grab her wrist.

“Do that again,” you say. “I DARE YOU.”

“Then listen to me,” Aradia says, her face a snarl as her other mitt goes to your other horn and she _wrenches_ in a way what hurts real good. “You’re going to help us whether you want to or not. You’re our inside man. What you know, we need. We can’t afford you to get sentimental or distracted.”

You squeeze her wrist until it cracks. Her smile comes back, wide and terrible.

Then she twists, and you end up on your back with sore horns. She up and CLIMBS ON YOU, hands still tight around your horns. You try to buck her off but realize that ain’t a good idea on account of where she’s sitting and stop. Don’t wanna give her the wrong idea. Not like she’s got a plush rump and rumble spheres what could make a grown troll cry. You let her be. Her face is in your face and heat is going all sorts of places. Ain’t felt like a fight in ages.

“You don’t have a choice, Gamzee,” she says, quiet and urgent-like. Her eyes bore into yours, almost adult-red and bright and clear. Her fingers tighten around your horns. “Wherever you hide, I will find you. What’s in your head, I will dig out. And I won’t be gentle.” More of her weight drops on your stomach to make her point. You wheeze.

Your arms are free. You coulda got her off and started running a while back. Why ain’t you moving? You twitch fingers, and they move. So ain’t no time voodoo going on here. You lift your hands. Then you get two sweet palmfuls of her butt and squeeze.

She grins.

GRINS.

Te—someone you ain’t wanna think about woulda decked you good, you think. What game is this fairy sister playing?

She hauls back and punches your nose.

 _Then_ you reckon you oughta show her she ain’t your boss, she ain’t your MASTER.

You throw her off, rolling over and over as both of you try to get the upper claw. Your horns knock against rocks. Her knees dig in your stomach. You get a good grip on her arms and use her for cushion as over the cliff of the crater you go, and it’s her turn to wheeze and groan.  You stand up.

“Why?” you say, and she sits up, hair mussed, hood torn, cheeks high and flushed. “Why is trying to stop a thing what you wanna make me do? Are you pulling my strings now, girl?” You swing your arms in mockery mimery. “You gonna ORDER ME?”

She looks up at you, then her legs swing out and down on your butt you go. You grunt. She’s up on you again, baby girl has a thing for you, you think fuzzily as her knees pin down your chest.

“You’re going to help us,” she says, “because it’s the right thing to do.” She stands up, offers her hand. You stare. “Because once upon a time, you weren’t a totally awful douchebag murderer. And if you aren’t being controlled anymore like you say, then we need you.”

You ignore her hand and stand all on your lonesome. Don’t need no help.

“How would you know?” you say, quiet. You kinda wanna believe her.

“Because I do,” she says. Then she grins. You don’t like it. Makes her face look ugly and creepy and it ain’t at all attractive or nothing. “Do whatever you like, then. I’m not going to stop you.”

She turns and starts walking, her hips sway, you know she can fly so you don’t know why she’s walking. You keep watching her hips.

Then you follow.

There ain’t no STRINGS on you.


End file.
